Some Men, Some Men
by snarkypants
Summary: Whatever it takes to get through the holidays.  Elliot/Olivia  Warnings for adultery, strong language, graphic sex and minimal sentimentality.


**Some Men, Some Men** by snarkypants

Olivia Benson is catching cases with John Munch on Christmas Eve.

She's okay with this; working (or at least being on call) on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day is par for the course by now. She and John order Chinese and catch up on paperwork. If they're not on an active case they sit around and shoot the shit and eat the cookies that someone's wife will surely have sent, and it's at least entertaining. One year they went to the Roxy after their shift to see an old French thriller about a deranged, albeit sympathetic, murderer, and it had been quirky fun, despite being something of a busman's holiday.

"If things stay quiet I'm going to catch a movie after the shift," Munch says, knowing that merely uttering the word 'quiet' is the biggest jinx there is; Christmas shifts are either fucking insane or fucking boring, and Olivia could do with a little of the latter today.

She gives him a warning look, but plays along. "What's showing?"

"Lina Wertmüller film festival."

"I dunno, John; I get that you don't celebrate Christmas, but isn't Hitler a bit _much_?"

Munch scowls and blinks at her and then the smoke clears. "No, no, no, you're thinking Leni Riefenstahl. Wertmüller was Italian, worked with Fellini, Mastroianni, Giannini."

"Anything I've heard of?"

"Seven Beauties, Swept Away…"

Olivia's lip curls. "The Madonna movie?"

"Nah, this was the original, a classic. The perfect antidote to all of the family values crap they dump in the water supply this time of year."

She shrugs, makes a noncommittal noise, but she'll probably join him for the same reason he invites her: to keep the other from being alone. They look out for each other, the only two detectives in the section unencumbered by traditional family ties.

The phone buzzes shrilly, and Munch is first to grab the handset and punch the button. "Munch, Special Victims."

Olivia glances up from her computer monitor, waiting for the signs that they're about to burst into action: a change in tone, a tightening of expression. But Munch's face doesn't deviate from its usual level of dyspeptic.

"And a jolly holiday to you, too, Detective Stabler," Munch says before punching the hold button. "Miss Olivia, gentleman caller on line one," he says, like he's the butler.

She scoffs. "That's no gentleman, that's Elliot."

John makes a shrugging motion with his eyebrows and returns to his crossword after hanging up.

"What's up, El?"

"I want to see you." His voice is low and deep, and she can hear the rumble of cars in the background.

"Yeah, well we're not going to get anything back from the lab on it until after Christmas." She's brisk, businesslike, but she shivers a little.

"I mean it. I need to be with you tonight."

"Hey, just enjoy your time off, okay? We'll pick it up again on Tuesday." They might be having two different conversations, which is precisely the point.

"Kathy and the kids went to Mass this afternoon while Eli was napping; I told her I was going to the midnight service so I'll have a couple of hours."

"Well, it's the holidays, El; what are you going to do?" she asks, as though she's commiserating about the lab not working quickly enough.

This affair is incompatible with the things she most admires in him: his devotion to his family, his faith, his honesty. His decisiveness. This affair diminishes him in her eyes and it hurts, but not enough for her to end it.

"I smell you on my clothes, Liv. It's killing me. I want you."

He knows exactly what to say to affect her. More than once they've fallen into bed together after a grueling case, and the smell of his body, rank with stale sweat and metabolized caffeine and adrenaline, makes her almost unbearably wet.

She closes her eyes and swallows. "You, ah, out finishing up your shopping?" she asks brightly, perhaps too brightly; Munch's gaze flickers in her direction.

"Say you want me to come over."

She bites her lip. "Um… as long as the roads stay clear it shouldn't be too bad." They've been calling for freezing precipitation, but it shouldn't stick immediately since the weather has been unseasonably warm for the past few days.

"I'll see you tonight."

"Okay; give everyone my best." She feels a pang at that—sending best wishes for the family they're undermining—but it _is_ what she would say if she and Elliot weren't fucking.

"You can give me your best later." She hears laughter in his voice, under the growl, and he's so obviously enjoying fucking with her while she keeps up appearances for Munch.

"Merry Christmas, Elliot."

"Merry Christmas, Liv."

She hangs up the phone and turns her attention back to the computer.

"He's out in that seething mass of humanity?" Munch asks, shaking his head.

"Crazy, right? Stocking stuffers for the kids or something. What's _your_ partner doing?"

"I got the distinct impression that my man Fin is _entertaining_ this evening"—Munch waggles his eyebrows—"and would prefer not to hear from us." He grins. "Wanna help me bust his balls?"

"Karma's a bitch, Munch," she says, smirking. "Leave me out of it." She nibbles on the corner of a sinfully rich piece of fudge.

He looks at her over the top of his tinted glasses; Olivia never noticed until now how much he resembles a skinny, irritated owl. "It is, as you say, a bitch." He's looking at her closely, but not without sympathy. He ruffles the pages of the Times in front of his chest, making him look even more owl-like. He clicks his cheap department-issue ballpoint a few times and resumes chipping away at the open spaces on the puzzle.

His outward contentment is diametrically opposed to the seething roil in Olivia's stomach. If Munch sees, then who else has? She rolls the rest of the piece of fudge in a napkin and tosses it in the trash.

* * *

She bows out from the movie and she and Munch share an elevator downstairs. He stops at street level since he's catching the subway to the theater.

"You know what you're doing, Liv?" John asks. "You're missing out on a damned good movie."

She can't quite speak, so she nods before clearing her throat. "Yeah, I do."

One of the best things about John Munch is that he doesn't push her. "Merry Christmas, Olivia," he says. "I hope you get everything you want."

* * *

Olivia doesn't do much in the way of decorating for Christmas. She has a little plastic tree that doesn't take up much space and there's this one Christmas-scented candle that she likes and buys in multiples, and that's pretty much it.

The holidays tend to be fraught with memories, like Serena going nuts with decorating and cooking… and then disappearing into a bottle on Christmas Eve. Or Serena being too depressed to bother with anything… and then shopping for Olivia's gifts at a bodega at the last minute.

So Olivia's consistent. Low key, but consistent.

Kathy Stabler goes all out with decorating, at least indoors. In the living room room the theme is Santa, and the Nativity is in the dining room. She even has seasonally-appropriate decor in the guest bathroom, which Olivia just can't quite get her head around. She wonders idly whether the kitchen is similarly adorned; the one time Olivia was invited over during the holidays her offers of helping with the dishes were refused.

Elliot's participation in the decorating—hanging lights outdoors—tends to be hit or miss, depending on their caseload. Olivia wonders whether he hung the lights this year. She thinks that perhaps he did; he's been particularly conscientious around the house since all this began.

Perhaps the guilt has led him to act like a better husband, she thinks, but it sets off her inner bullshit detector. _Don't try to justify yourself_. Kathy would rather have a faithful husband than Christmas lights.

Kathy Stabler is a nice woman. And more than that, she has the moral high ground: she's _right_. No matter who she is at home—and there's no evidence she's anything less than a devoted mother and concerned wife—she doesn't deserve what they're doing to her.

* * *

Eggnog, liberally dosed with Scotch or rum, is the extent of Olivia's special Christmas dishes. Dinner consists of takeout or something simple she can assemble from items on hand. She clips recipes from magazines fully intending to try them, but she never has the right grocery list when she makes her irregular, spur-of-the-moment shopping trips, so she just defaults to the familiar. She bought a can of cannellini beans one time and lost the recipe that went with them, and six years later they're still sitting in her cupboard.

Olivia thought for a while that she would like to make something special for dinner, but that felt like she was trying to prove something. Besides, she pictured herself waiting alone for hours at a set table with candlesticks withering away into stumps, and the image was so depressingly similar to holidays with her mother that it made her nauseous.

When she's annoyed with him she tells herself that he'll get what he gets, and he'll like it or he'll leave.

Ignoring the fact that he'll leave anyway.

* * *

She puts on warm pajamas and pours herself a glass of eggnog. She starts a DVD, lights her candle, and settles in to wait.

Serena Benson loved to quote Dorothy Parker, usually when she was pissed off at a boyfriend; one of her favorites, "Chant for Dark Hours", was ironic and catchy and ended with the line:

_(All your life you wait around for some damn man!)_

In Queens, Kathy Stabler is wrapping and assembling Christmas presents with her husband. Eli's at that age where his toys require a toolbox and an engineering degree and a few hours of work before they're child-ready. Soon she'll put on her nightgown and wash her face and brush her teeth, and Elliot will kiss her goodnight and leave, ostensibly for Midnight Mass.

Olivia wonders if Kathy suspects, if she'll cry hot, angry tears into her pillow as Elliot goes to visit his mistress. Or will she sleep blissfully unaware, content and secure in the health of her marriage? Both possibilities are equally hurtful, and Olivia's stomach churns.

It's weird to go from being a man's equal to being his _mistress_. The term implies a subordinate relationship, so if Elliot is diminished by the affair, as his mistress so is she.

* * *

She's dozing lightly when she hears him at her door. He lets himself in, throws his coat over a chair and locks the door behind him. On TV, Ralphie just shot his eye out.

"Hi," he says.

"Hi." She gets her feet under herself to stand, but he waves her off.

"Stay put." He steps out of his shoes and joins her on the sofa, and she leans into him, putting her head on his chest.

His hands and face are cold and he smells like outside. His hair has tiny beads of moisture in it. He puts his arms around her—careful not to touch her bare skin with his chilly hands because that's a good way to get elbowed in the belly—and rests his chin on her head.

It hits him like this sometimes. Despite his excitement, his impatience, sometimes the enormity of what they're doing is too much.

"El—we don't have to—"

"It's okay," he says in a tight voice. "Lemme just switch gears." She feels his breath stir her hair, and the cold of his trouser legs seeps through her pajamas.

He rubs circles on her upper arm, and then he sighs. "Liv."

She tries, and mostly succeeds, to keep her tone neutral. "Yeah?"

"I oughtta be able to stop this." He sounds a little defeated.

"If that's what you want—"

"It's not what I _want_."

"No one's going to _force_ you to do anything, Elliot."

He huffs out an impatient breath. "I know; I don't expect you to. Will you just—" His breathing is louder now. He swallows and she can hear it amplified through his chest cavity. "Just lie here with me a minute, okay?" Elliot turns his head a bit and kisses her forehead.

_I lie with you every day. _She nuzzles his neck, breathing the fine, clean scent of his skin.

After a few minutes he tests the temperature of his fingers against a sliver of her belly, and since she doesn't protest he slides his hand inside her pajama top and plucks at her nipple. Elliot's a tit man, not that it was much of a surprise. "I was thinking earlier…"

"Uh-oh," she says mordantly, even as she presses herself closer to him.

"Yeah, I know; workin' without tools. But seriously, what if we got away for a weekend in January, when things are a little less crazy?"

"What did you have in mind?"

He tugs at his ear. "I dunno. Just… not having to think about schedules, or catching a case, or running into people, or, hell, smelling like the wrong kind of soap, for Chrissake."

"Or smelling like sex."

"That too, yeah. It'd be nice. What do you think?"

"We'd have to come up with a really good cover."

He shrugs. "I tell Kathy we caught a case."

"And if she goes up to the precinct? She's done it before, and there's no way in hell Cragen would cover for us if we're not on deck." She pauses for a moment, thinking. "Fin or John _might_, but only if we warned them up front."

He grimaces; the more people who know, the greater the potential of being found out, and she knows he doesn't like being beholden to Fin any more than strictly necessary. "A conference?"

"That One-P-P hasn't authorized or paid for? No way."

"Okay, so we'll have to work on it. We're not detectives for nothing." He scowls a little in concentration. "What's wrong?"

She sighs and shakes her head. "Feels like planning a crime."

"Nah, this is just moral turpitude. Not crime." His voice is light, but his mouth twists at the duplicity of it all.

"Oh, I feel much better now, Elliot. Take me!" She collapses in a mock swoon on the sofa.

He gives her a narrow-eyed look. "I just want 48 hours of your time, where there's no one else going to stick their neck in. That's all."

"_Just_ time?" she asks, tugging him by the front of his shirt, coaxing him to lie on top of her.

"Well, sex, too."

"That's what I thought." She's grinning as she kisses him. He fits so perfectly between her spread thighs, just enough of a stretch that it feels like a really good workout. She drags her foot up the back of his leg, caressing the bulge of his calf muscle with her bare toes.

"I can't get enough of you, Liv: the way you smell, the way you taste." He holds her head steady and kisses her like he wants to take her apart with his teeth. "I just want to go down on you all night."

"Oh…" she sighs against his mouth and clears her throat. "Too bad we don't have that kind of time."

"Yeah. Which is why I want to get away." He sucks on her lower lip, and she rocks her hips against his. He's primed and ready to roll and the pressure is so _good_.

"Am—_ah!_—am I expected to make a good-faith offer of oral sex to reciprocate?" she asks as primly as she can manage.

His grin is quick and dirty. "We do have _that_ kind of time."

She cuffs him on the back of the head. "Pig."

He chuckles and pins her wrists to the sofa. "Hey, I don't have to come here for this abuse; I can get that at work."

"Then don't be a pig."

He's kissing her neck, and mumbles something that sounds like "Sorry," so she relaxes, and he lets go of her hands.

He lifts her pajama top and mouths her nipple, suckling and nuzzling her, going from one breast to the other. "How'd you know this is exactly what I wanted for Christmas?" he asks, barely raising his head; he sounds drunk.

"Just a couple things I had lying around the house," she says, all practicality and mock humility, dirty Martha Stewart, and he laughs; his breath cools the saliva on her skin and she shivers.

They agreed to forego exchanging gifts and she's a little relieved, despite the illicit thrill it gives her to imagine him using or wearing her gift in public. Elliot isn't particularly sentimental, though, and she has no reason to believe he would assign any gift totemic significance. That, and Detective Benson doesn't like to leave any more evidence than strictly necessary, and Elliot hasn't fucked all of her brains out yet. _Yet._

"Elliot… baby, let's go to bed."

He sucks hard and uses his teeth on her sensitive flesh, making her gasp, and then he soothes the sting with the tip of his tongue. "Let's go."

* * *

She's found that blowjobs go much more easily for her if Elliot's lying flat on his back. It took her a long time after Sealview before she could even _consider_ giving head without having a panic attack.

Aside from the fact that they are Caucasian males, there are no similarities between Elliot Stabler and Lowell Harris, but she still recoils if she sees movement in her peripheral vision while she's giving Elliot head.

He remains passive throughout, keeping his arms at his sides unless she moves him. She's working her way up to allowing him to touch her hair; she's placed his hand on her shoulder, and that's progress.

She can't bring herself to regret all the choreography, because his uncharacteristic passivity totally gets him off.

Totally gets _her_ off.

She's in control of everything: the depth of his penetration, the strength of her suction, the speed of her movement. She doesn't let him come in her mouth because it feels like strangling, but she gets him very, very close before she rises and straddles his thighs. She keeps her hands on his cock, her fingers ringed snugly around him, pressing and stroking.

"Oh, God, Liv—" he says in a choked voice.

She croons at him, low and soft, almost comforting, then she scoots forward and reaches between them to position him, guide him, and she sinks down. They both exhale during the long, slick slide, as if it's displacing the air in both of their bodies. She's used to it by now, knows how to move to take him deep inside without hurting herself, and this is another one of those instances where being in control of speed and depth is a good thing. "Want me, El?" she asks, panting, and he doesn't need to answer; she can feel it.

He swallows hard. "Yeah. Let me touch you."

When she nods he pushes himself up to sitting and wraps his arms around her waist. He's inside her, rocking rather than thrusting, rotating his hips and pressing against her clit, and she trembles.

He's looking up at her; his mouth is open and his pupils are blown so wide that only the thinnest rim of blue iris is visible. Oh, fuck, he _kills_ her when he's like this, when he's tender and vulnerable. His teeth are so white behind his red lips, and she thinks _apples_ and _biting_ and _juicy_.

He clamps down on her hips and fucks her from below until her breathing is uneven and labored. Then he's shifting, adjusting, and she goes from sitting astride him to landing on her back before she realizes what he's about. He's still balls-deep inside her, and she shouldn't love it when he pulls such aggressive strength moves on her, but he's an irresistible force, and with him she's nothing like an immovable object.

"Proud of yourself?" she gasps out, but it's all for show. He grins like a pirate, too breathless to retort. She's got his ass in her hands, hauling him closer, and the joints in her bed are creaking, and her downstairs neighbors hate her now, may even start beating on the ceiling with a broomstick again, and he's uncoiling and thrusting, and the muscles in his belly and shoulders are twitching like he's on the ragged edge of orgasm.

She grunts with every thumping thrust, raising her hips to meet him, and then his head tilts back and he goes very still, which drives her wild. She locks her ankles together behind his back and grinds into him, making the friction she needs, where she needs it. His eyes are screwed shut and his lips pull back from his teeth in an involuntary sneer. "Fuck, Liv—"

When he comes it's in a series of staccato bursts, and his hips pump between her legs until he collapses with his head on her breast. He catches his breath after a few moments. "Shit, I'm sorry," he says in a rough voice. "I tried to hold on, Olivia."

"It's okay; we've got time," she says. She relaxes her legs, and her feet drop to the bed.

He's shaking with exertion and adrenaline; his cock is still half-hard, and Olivia contracts her vaginal muscles around him. He groans like she just punched him, and she shivers and keeps moving; she's so close to coming that she's growing frantic.

When he slips out of her she whimpers and tries to pull him back into place but he won't be deterred now that he has a goal in mind. He uses the strength in his arms to push his way down her body. He briefly sucks on her tits and she squeals, pressing her cunt against the hard planes of his belly, and he forces her hips back to the bed. "No," he says, and his tone brooks no argument.

He slides down a little more, and then he's breathing on her pussy, parting her labia with his thumbs and taking a taste.

He sucks her swollen clit, not at all squeamish about putting his mouth where his dick was moments before, and fuck, if that isn't a turn-on. His face is wet with their combined fluids as he draws on her, pulling the little kernel of flesh and nerves taut, stretching it. She can actually feel her clitoris lengthening under the pressure and it feels ridiculously good. His fingers are working inside her, curling and stroking, and then from seemingly out of nowhere an orgasm settles on her like a warm blanket, a benediction, beginning at her forehead and rippling pleasurably through her body.

She becomes dimly aware that his face is pressed to her belly. His chest is expanding and contracting like a bellows, and he's hot like a stoked furnace. His short, thin hair is dark with sweat.

"Oh, El… El," she says, winded and blissed-out. "That's so good."

He nods, meeting her gaze with his own; he looks shell-shocked, and she is once again struck by the question: how could Kathy not know? She has to know this expression. She has to know fucked-out Elliot on sight after twenty-odd years.

* * *

"I've gotta head back," he says. He shrugs into his shirt and she watches the flex of his pectorals, admiring how the crisp cotton clings to his biceps and forearms. His trousers are open, hanging from his hips; the buckle of his belt catches the light as he buttons his shirt.

What she'd really like would be for him to undress and crawl back in bed with her where it's warm, and for them to awaken slowly at a decent hour and have lazy, sour-breath morning sex.

Perhaps he's onto something with the whole "getting away" thing.

She doesn't tell him she wishes he would stay; he knows it, and it's just too pathetic to put into words. It feels weak, clingy, perish the thought.

He tucks his shirt into his trousers, then zips, then buckles. Puts his loosened tie in place and tightens. Fastens his cuffs.

This is the worst part. Where he walks out, and she's naked with the covers pulled up to her chin, feeling like Moneypenny after a dirty weekend with Bond, like a dame who Philip Marlowe just chucked under the chin and told not to wait up for him. Like a besmirched maiden whose faithless lover doesn't want to cuddle.

"Do you ever confess this?" she asks.

"No." He sounds surprisingly unconcerned. "Not much point unless I want to repent of it." He sits beside her on the bed and pushes her messy hair out of her eyes. "Which I don't."

You don't _yet_, she thinks. She takes his face between her hands and kisses him, hard.

* * *

A/N: The French movie about the serial killer is La Boucher.

The title comes from Dorothy Parker's "Chant for Dark Hours"

I'm presuming that they've already negotiated birth control _et al_; in my head they're both clean and Olivia has an IUD. They may have plans to get tested regularly, perhaps every three months or so, Tuesday mornings look good, and they may or may not get waffles afterward, but I think that's best left to them. What I am saying is: they are being responsible, about that at least. The birth control and the testing, not the waffles. Although I am strongly pro-waffle, so put down your pitchforks, WafflePAC.


End file.
